Hillary’s ‘Puppet’ Screed

She accused a rival nominee of being a stealth agent of a foreign power.

For months she had only intimated it, or delegated the real dirty work to her surrogates and campaign staff, but at the final televised debate this week Hillary Clinton finally let loose: Donald Trump is “a puppet” of the Kremlin, she declared.

It’s worth pausing to consider just how extreme and incendiary that allegation is. For Trump to be a “puppet” of a hostile foreign power—especially Russia, arguably America’s oldest continuous adversary—would be an event of earth-shaking magnitude, unrivaled in all U.S. history. It would mean that by some nefarious combination of subterfuge and collusion, the sinister Russian leader Vladimir Putin had managed to infiltrate our political system at its very core, executing a Manchurian Candidate-style scheme that would’ve been dismissed as outlandish in even the most hyperbolic 1960s-era espionage movie script.

Trump is often accused of violating the “norms” that typically govern the tenor of U.S. presidential campaigns. And these accusations very often have validity: at the same debate, he declined to preemptively endorse the legitimacy of the election outcome, which appears to be without precedent. As everyone is now keenly aware, he’s unleashed a constant torrent of brash histrionics that defy discursive standards and violate “norms” of many kinds—You’re rigged! I’m rigged! We’re all rigged!

But Hillary too violated a longstanding norm this week with her “puppet” screed, which was the culmination of her campaign’s months-long effort to tarnish Trump as a secret Russian lackey using the kind of retrograde nomenclature (“Puppet”? Really?) that would’ve made even the most hardened old-time Cold Warrior blush. Because of Hillary’s barb, there will henceforth be a precedent for accusing a rival major-party nominee of being a stealth agent of a fearsome foreign power, based on only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.

Extrapolating from Trump’s stated belief that cooperation, rather than antagonism, with nuclear-armed Russia is desirable, Hillary’s boosters have long surmised that he must therefore be under the spell of a devious foreign spymaster: it can’t be that he genuinely prefers to be friendly with Russia and forge an alliance with their military. The only tenable explanation by their lights is this harebrained mind-control conspiracy theory.

One central irony to all this is that Trump basically has the same position vis-à-vis Russia as Barack Obama. As Trump pointed out in the Wednesday night debate, Obama attempted to broker a military alliance with Putin’s Russia only a few weeks ago; it fell through after American forces in Syria bombed soldiers loyal to Assad in direct contravention of the terms of the agreement. But it was an instance of deal-making nevertheless, so if Trump is guilty of accommodating the dastardly Russian menace, Obama must be similarly guilty.

Hillary’s increasingly hostile rhetoric on the homefront also likely contributed to “nuking” the accord with Russia, as she’s repeatedly accused Putin of subverting the American electoral process by way of hacks, as well as lambasting him as the “grand godfather’’ of global extremist movements—including the U.S. “alt-right.”

It would be one thing if these fantastic claims were ever substantiated with ample evidence, but they’re just not. At the debate, Hillary attributed her theory regarding the Russian orchestration of recent hacks on her campaign and the Democratic National Committee to unnamed “intelligence professionals.” These unspecified individuals have also failed to produce tangible evidence linking Russia to Trump, or Russia to the hacks. They are also the same sorts of people whose proclamations about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq were uncritically parroted by media allies.

She launched into the “puppet” rant after moderator Chris Wallace quoted an excerpt from one of her speeches delivered to a foreign bank, which had been published by WikiLeaks. It should be reiterated that Hillary had actively concealed these speech transcripts over the course of the entire presidential campaign, and the only reason the American public can now view them is thanks to WikiLeaks. But in an effort to change the subject from her newly revealed (and damning) comments before admiring cadres of financial elites, Hillary accused the rogue publishing organization of being party to a Russian plot. “This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly, from Putin himself,” Hillary proclaimed.

What evidence has been furnished that demonstrates “Putin himself” directed such efforts? Absolutely none that we are yet aware of. One could feasibly posit that such a blithe willingness to launch baseless attacks against foreign leaders is indicative of a poor temperament on Hillary’s part; it’s exactly the kind of bluster that could escalate into hot conflict, and will likely sour the U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship for years to come under a prospective Clinton Administration.

In addition to accusing Putin of hacking the U.S. election, Hillary again announced her staunch support for a “no-fly zone” in Syria, which would necessitate the deployment of thousands more U.S. ground troops to the war-torn country and provoke direct, hostile confrontation with Russia, which is sustaining its client Assad. When asked by Wallace if she would authorize the shoot-down of Russian warplanes, Hillary evaded the question. (A simple “no” would’ve been nice.)

It’s long been known that Hillary is a hawk; she is supported by many of the same neoconservatives who once gravitated to George W. Bush. But her bellicosity toward Russia, which climaxed with the “puppet” diatribe, demonstrates that her hawkish tendencies are far from conventional; they are extreme. Hillary seems to be at her most animated (and one might say, perhaps even crazed) when she is aiming ire at supposed foreign adversaries, which of late has almost entirely been Russia, Russia, Russia. (Russia was the number-one topic broached at all this year’s debates, according to a tally by Adam Johnson of the media-watchdog organization FAIR.)

The tenor of the international situation has gotten exceptionally dire. Last Friday it was reported that the CIA is preparing to launch an “unprecedented” cyberattack on Russia; relations between the two states are at a dangerous nadir not seen in decades, to the point that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that a nuclear exchange is perilously likely.

Trump, for all his faults, has long advocated a sort of détente.

So why aren’t these developments front-and-center in media coverage of the campaign? Instead, it’s still a relentless focus on Trump’s many foibles, notwithstanding what appears to be Hillary’s steady sleepwalk into a potentially catastrophic war.

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38 Responses to Hillary’s ‘Puppet’ Screed

The stupid elites are so blinded by their greed, that they truly believe that if a little war makes them incredibly wealthy, then big wars will make them fabulously so.

They now have an empty pantsuit for sale off the rack that they can pour all their fantastical delusions for power and greed into. As advisor closer than a sister Huma Abedin put it in the leaked emails, this elderly woman, now reduced by age to confusion, needs careful handling to make sure she knows who she is talking to. It requires an earpiece to place policy statements, such as they are, into such an unhinged mind. Such folks are no longer capable of judgment of consequences that flow from the wealthy and influential war lobby; its enough to know that regular cash deposits are flowing into the machine’s accounts, and no more.

‘Unnamed sources’ re: Russian responsibility for the hacks…how willfully blind can you be?
James Clapper, DNI& Homeland security issued a joint statement on behalf of 17 agencies that said the Russians did it…on the record. Several private security firms were the first to ID Russian Govt as the source

“Extrapolating from Trump’s stated belief that cooperation, rather than antagonism, with nuclear-armed Russia is desirable…”

This is false. We extrapolate from the fact that Trump sides with Putin rather than this country’s intelligence agencies. Furthermore, plenty of evidence has been offered. But you won’t find it at Inforwars.

Hillary Clinton was formerly an advocate for children’s rights. Indeed, she was supposedly an authority on that subject. She should have stuck with what she knew rather than embrace delusions of grandeur. Her tenure as S o S demonstrated that she was out of her depth. As POTUS it’ll only be worse.

An great, important essay, Michael Tracey, on the Clinton camp’s attempts to switch the subject from the damning contents of the Clinton-camp emails to the-mean-ol’-Russians-must’ve-hacked-‘em.

As Donald Trump said during the last debate: “That was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders, OK? How did we get on to Putin?”

I do have one bone to pick with you, Brother Tracey. You write: “He [Donald Trump] declined to preemptively endorse the legitimacy of the election outcome…”

Can you tell me of any past presidential candidate who has ever been asked to “pre-emptively endorse the legitimacy of the election outcome”?

How could any candidate possibly endorse an election’s legitimacy before the election is even held?

Chris Wallace put the question to Trump this way: “You have been warning at rallies recently that this election is rigged and that Hillary Clinton is in the process of trying to steal it from you. Do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely — sir, that you will absolutely accept the result of this election?”

TRUMP: I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time. What I’ve seen — what I’ve seen is so bad…If you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people that are registered to vote — millions, this isn’t coming from me — this is coming from Pew Report and other places — millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote…Tell you one other thing. She shouldn’t be allowed to run. It’s crooked — she’s — she’s guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run. And just in that respect, I say it’s rigged…What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense. OK?

Until the Nov 8th election has actually been held and a candidate has had a chance “to look at it [the legitimacy of the results] at the time,” how could he possibly “preemptively endorse the legitimacy of the election outcome”?

I’m glad she did this, even though she’s wrong, because it makes it “alright” – i.e. it “mainstreams” something that has needed airing for quite some time. Many of our elected officials are acting as agents of foreign powers. The people who take Israel money, Saudi money, Nigeria money, they’re no better than traitors as far as I and a lot of other Americans are concerned. It needs to be prosecuted. Relevant laws that have lain fallow, in some cases for decades, as the FBI has abdicated its traditional function as the guardian and monitor of government integrity in this regard – laws like the Foreign Agent Registration Act and the Espionage Act.

Hillary’s talking through her hat about Trump, in my opinion, and as a prime mover of the wrecking crew that has been destroying us over the last twenty or thirty years she’s got a hell of a lot of nerve accusing Trump of being a Russian agent, but there are some very bad actors out there, ranging from AIPAC to retired government employees and elected officials fronting for dictators and Communist countries. They ought to be thrown in prison.

So thanks for that much, Hillary – you’ve made it safe for Americans to start talking about treachery again. And we’ve got a hell of a lot of traitors to attend to.

Putin’s alleged interference in the election is truly this year’s version of the Weapons of Mass Destruction. An accusation with no proof that is mindlessly distributed by the media, but with vastly more serious consequences. Starting a war with Iraq is one thing. Starting a war with Russia is something else entirely.

1) These Wikileaks are hacks into US users and SHOULD BE A CRIME!!! I wish the US would avoid this but HRC campaign has every right to complain they were hacked. Yes they are over the top but let us not whitewash a crime here. (In reality the Wikileaks are completely boring campaign stuff not SOME GLORIOUS MUD to sling at HRC!)
2) Putin has been been agressive and should not be trusted. It is forgotten Putin struck first in Ukraine by trying to stop a trade deal with Europe. NOT NATO but Putin interferred with trade deals. And he clearly being aggressive in Syria with the Civil War. (Luckily most of his moves are not successful.)

Putin had never been agressive.
1)Trade deal with Russia made it possible to deal with EU also. It was europeans who vetoed cooperation vith Russia. And Putin deal was really more benefactionary to the Ukrainians.
2)In Syria, russians are legally under interbational law, have every right to be there and deal with terrorist how they choose, as long as it’s welcomed by the Syria authorities.

“Some Dare Call It” wrote: “The people who take Israel money, Saudi money, Nigeria money, they’re no better than traitors as far as I and a lot of other Americans are concerned. It needs to be prosecuted.”

Donald Trump addressed these very issues in his Gettysburg speech on Saturday:

“Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:…FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government…SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.”

It’s interesting to read comments and see how everyone’s reality is so different and how selective the bias becomes. For instance “Collin” believes that offering the Ukraine a trade deal is an act of “aggression”. Furthermore, coming to the aid of an ally who is under attack by enemies both foreign and domestic is equally “Aggression”. The scary part is that they actually do believe this. Apparently the idea of “you are either with us or against us” has never died. So as the US runs around destroying nations this is not aggression. Aggression is offering aid to the governments under attack by the US.

You can’t make this stuff up folks, people really are this crazy. It’s a complete disconnect from reality, yet they can still walk around, go to work, vote, etc. etc. Amazing isn’t it?

“Stooge” is probably a better word than puppet. It’s not an inflitrated agent but someone who’s too naive to see that he is being used by Putin and his American supporters. It’s Trump’s own fault, though. His supporters have seized on a typical Trump off-the-cuff remark that he would “talk” to Putin and hyped it into a claim that he would capitulate to Putin (over Ukraine, one supposes). Trump has done nothing to refute that claim or clarify his position. He has also allowed Putin to present him as someone who would capitulate. I suspect Trump doesn’t actually want to be elected, which may expalin why he’s letting the claim stand.

Exactly where is all the material the Russians / Wikileaks hacked from the GOP and Trump campaign? Why are we only seeing the Democratic stuff? It would be uncharacteristically stupid of the Russians not to have hacked both sides in the upcoming U.S. election. Why hasn’t this material surfaced?

Can Hillary run the country from prison or would she pardon herself first???

Schweizer also noted that WikiLeaks emails provide proof that the “Clintons have a long and lucrative history of financial deals with the Russians, particularly with the Russian government.”
Schweizer explained the “deep ties” the Clintons have to Russia, specifically how in 2010 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved the sale and transfer of 20% of U.S. uranium output to the Russian government:
You’ve got this uranium deal, in which Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State signed off and approved the sale of a Canadian company to the Russian government — Rosatom, the State Atomic Energy Corporation — that was allowed to purchase a company called Uranium One. Hillary Clinton approved that deal as Secretary of State. But the small Canadian company, Unrianub One, that was sold, was owned by shareholders who are huge contributors to the Clinton Foundation. In fact, Matt, $145 million went to the Clinton Foundation from nine shareholders in Uranium One.

“But the Russian ties go even deeper than that,” Schweizer added, “they go to the Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, John Podesta.
Schweizer explained how the Wikileaks emails reveal how Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta secured “75,000 common shares” from his membership on the executive board of an energy company, Joule Unlimited, which received $35 million from a Putin-connected Russian government fund.
“You literally have the campaign chairman of the Clinton campaign business partners, directly, with Vladimir Putin,” Schweizer said. “When it comes to Russian ties and Russian financial ties, you have to begin with the Clintons.”

No, no, Clinton hasn’t accused her opponent of being a Russian “stealth agent”; she’s accused him of being a patsy. Putin’s playing Trump like a violin, not because he wants Trump in office per se, but in order to delegitimize American democracy.

As Gary Kasperov and others have pointed out – until Trump releases his tax returns, we don’t know just how much in debt to Putin’s friends in Russia that Donald Trump is.

There’s the old joke – when you owe the bank $100K, the bank owns you. When you owe the bank $100 million … you own the bank.

And US banks, tired of Trumps string of bankruptcies, have decided not to be “owned” by him anymore – forcing him to seek out foreign investors. And there’s a lot of evidence that those investments have come from Putin’s inner circle.

I think that the old saying above doesn’t work when you’re dealing not with Goldman-Sachs, or BOA, but with a crime syndicate. When you owe them – they not only own you, but your family.

And the way Putin runs Russia far more models a crime syndicate than anything else. Most geopolitical advisors believe that what Putin wants for the West more than anything is chaos.

If Trump refuses to acknowledge the results of the election in a couple weeks, and calls for his followers to reject the results, he will be carrying out Putin’s will whether to satisfy Putin, or simply his own ego.

“If Trump refuses to acknowledge the results of the election in a couple weeks, and calls for his followers to reject the results, he will be carrying out Putin’s will whether to satisfy Putin, or simply his own ego.”

I would have thought that Hillary would be Putin’s preferred candidate. What more could Russia want than four more years of America the bumbling, incompetent giant, staggering from one Middle Eastern tar pit to another? Four years of America’s internal divisions sharpening as millions more immigrants (legal and illegal) pour in to compete with us and the tens of millions of immigrants who are already here for jobs and resources? Four more years of social and economic resentment deepening as the staggeringly rich get staggeringly richer while the rest of us struggle to keep our heads above water? A Hillary Presidency more or less guarantees that.

Clinton prefaced her remarks with the recent ‘saw’ that reading, or having possession of the Wikileaked material was some sort of criminal act. Her comments to the Wall Streeters hardly qualify as anything much worth stealing. Although they paid handsomely to have her say them, the messages have only the value she gives them, which is, and was no secret.

“If Trump refuses to acknowledge the results of the election in a couple weeks, and calls for his followers to reject the results, he will be carrying out Putin’s will whether to satisfy Putin, or simply his own ego.”

You seem to have the impression that Trump is somehow directing those who support him.

I’m one of those supporters, and believe me, we need no encouragement from him to reject the result if it goes against him.

It seems a lot of people don’t understand what’s really going on here. This election has never been a parlor game, it’s never been business as usual, and it isn’t even a semi-civilized discourse between mostly honorable people who ought to feel obliged to compromise with one another anymore. It’s a crucial turning point. The stakes are too damn high to “accept” this vile woman and her equally vile husband with the unprecedented power that the executive branch currently disposes of.

If he loses, I hope all those who supported him actively work to shut Clinton’s presidency down, make it impossible for her and her husband to advance any of their agenda. If that means they’ll have less scope for starting new wars, alienating or damaging yet more allies, or further enriching themselves at the public expense, so much the better.

@Vlad’s Her Daddy I would have thought that Hillary would be Putin’s preferred candidate. What more could Russia want than four more years of America the bumbling, incompetent giant, staggering from one Middle Eastern tar pit to another?

A President who decides America must act unilaterally for its own interests, long standing treaties, organizational ties, and trade deals be damned. The result becomes a global chaos where our traditional allies are no longer willing to cooperate with a country whose word means nothing … and where Putin can justify his autocratic rule to the Russian people with the proof that democracy leads to instability and weakness.

Meanwhile … the Middle East? You forget about Trump’s insistence that America should have maintained a large military garrison in Iraq, and confiscated their oil for our corporations? That kind of “tar pit”? It’s almost as if everyone in Trumpland forgets that he was a strong advocate for militarily taking out Qaddafi.

@Pay Day it isn’t even a semi-civilized discourse between mostly honorable people who ought to feel obliged to compromise with one another anymore. It’s a crucial turning point…

If he loses, I hope all those who supported him actively work to shut Clinton’s presidency down, make it impossible for her and her husband to advance any of their agenda.

If you haven’t noticed, the GOP has spent 8 years refusing to compromise with the man who defeated “this vile woman” in the Democratic Primaries in 2008, and went so far as to leave a vacancy on the Supreme Court for almost a year not to mention dozens and dozens of bureaucratic appointees left danging in the wind for months to years, and even used budgetary processes to shut Obama’s Presidency down.

The next step, and what Trump seems to be advocating, isn’t more of the same … it’s a next level of opposition that America should truly fear, because unleashed it isn’t going to be easy to put back in the bottle.

It could be amusing if not for the fact that it is quite sad.
Lots of accusations is thrown Trump’s way without even the slightest hint of proof.
What’s even more sad that the idea that Trump is (or even can be) controlled by Putin is laughable. If Putin is so powerfull that he can casually control the presidential candidate, why chose Trump? Wouldn’t it be smarter to controll someone like Hillary, who is a complete sellout, but put’s on a visage of decency? Nobody would suspect that for sure. And she has a real history of taking Russian money. Really, it’s sad to see that MacCartism is back and kicking, with anyone not sufficiently hawkish can be painted as foreign spy.

balconesfault, Putin runs Russia in a way, that has no similarities to the running of the crime sindicate. In fact, he has the record of being honest and working without the corruption. Record, supported by some of the american journalists, who had the chance to see for themselves. What’s more, Putin is known moderate and supported the prodemocracy Sobchak and his course, even protecting him from the KGB, for the God’s sake! And your so called experts are parroting the party line to create a bogeyman and make you pay for expensive weapons the Pentagon will order for your protection. Because, you know, those Russkies are already under your bed, planting the nuclear warhead there.

@balconesfault – “The next step, and what Trump seems to be advocating, isn’t more of the same … it’s a next level of opposition that America should truly fear, because unleashed it isn’t going to be easy to put back in the bottle.”

What I’m saying is that it’s too late. It’s already out of the bottle. The bottle was uncorked by the neoconservative and neoliberal elites. What happens next is down to their arrogance, corruption, and incompetence.

It’s absurd to blame it on Trump, particularly when the living symbol of that elite arrogance, incompetence and corruption is Hillary Clinton. Don’t blame it on those using him as a vehicle for change, either. They’re what we used to call “the American people”.

For years, Trump and some Republicans have questioned Obama’s birthright citizenship, and have accused him of being a “Muslim” (not that there’s anything wrong with that), thereby implying that he is not loyal to America or its interests.

Contra an FBI investigation, and with no regard to Constitutional protections or our judicial traditions, Trump announces that, if president, he will “lock her up.”

@Vlad’s Her Daddy I would have thought that Hillary would be Putin’s preferred candidate. What more could Russia want than four more years of America the bumbling, incompetent giant, staggering from one Middle Eastern tar pit to another?

Why should anyone assume Russia would significantly benefit from American instability? The Russkies have been trying to work with us since the USSR fell. It isn’t their fault we’ve given them the cold shoulder.

In Hillary’s world everybody is either a puppet or a puppeteer. Such dichotomy is usual for people obsessed with gaining absolute power: everybody is an object, subjugation or destruction are the only options to deal with the world. I am pretty much sure that she really believes that Trump is a Putin’s puppet: the notion of negotiations is alien to her. Ironic that such an individual had been in charge of the US diplomatic activities.